Overrated Football Players

Triumph Books recently published “The Maisel Report: College Football’s Most Overrated and Underrated Players, Coaches, Teams, and Traditions,” by Ivan Maisel of ESPN.com. Maisel says Miami has the most overrated program — Penn State and Alabama come in at Nos. 4 and 5; let’s see how the rest of this season goes — while Boston College has the most underrated. The most overrated conference? That’s easy: the Big Ten. Maisel chooses the Michigan cornerback Charles Woodson as the most overrated Heisman Trophy winner (he was guilty of beating out Peyton Manning in 1997). Coming after last season, his choice for the most overrated coach is an obvious one: Charlie Weis.

According to Maisel, the most overrated national champion is the 1966 Notre Dame team (the one that happily played No. 2 Michigan State to a 10-10 tie). He makes an argument that has been made before: unbeaten and untied Alabama wound up No. 3 partly because of the intense dislike for Gov. George Wallace. Who knew that so many sportswriters and coaches in the mid-’60s were passionately committed to the cause of integration?

I live in New York, where college football doesn’t exist, so let’s turn to Sal Paolantonio’s book “The Paolantonio Report: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players, Teams, Coaches, and Moments in NFL History,” which Triumph published last year.

My colleague Greg Cowles will disagree (as do I) with Paolantonio’s choice for the most overrated N.F.L. moment: “The Catch.” The entire state of Illinois will deplore his pick for the most overrated Super Bowl team: the 1985 Bears. (His runner-up, the undefeated 1972 Dolphins, should have been No. 1.) His selection for the most underrated coach — Weeb Ewbank — is hard to argue with, but his choice for the most overrated coach is strange: has anyone ever thought highly of Norv Turner as a head coach?

His most overrated quarterback is Joe Namath; his most underrated, Bart Starr. As a Jet fan of a certain age, I am obliged to disagree with the choice of Namath. His No. 2 pick for the most overrated QB is also now a Jet: Brett Favre. That seems right. Paolantonio doesn’t come out and say it, but a colleague of mine points out that if Favre were black, the consensus would go something like this: “He’s a terrific athlete with a great arm, but he just doesn’t understand the complexities of the game.” That is, he’d be known as a reckless, erratic decision maker, not as the charismatic “gunslinger” beloved of writers and broadcasters.

And I don’t know if he could really be called underrated – he wasn’t much more than a journeyman as a player – but I’d say “I’d Rather Be Wright” by Steve Wright, who played for the Giants and Packers in the late ’60s, might be the most underrated football book of all time, very much worth reprinting. (Interesting sidenote: It was “as told to” Kenneth Turan, nowadays the LA Times’ film critic.)

There are certain things overrated quarterbacks don’t do. Some of those things are:

1. Throw more touchdowns than anyone else in NFL history.
2. Throw for more yards than anyone else in NFL history.
3. Complete more passes than anyone else in NFL history.

and the kicker

4. Win more games as a starter than anyone else in NFL history.

Sure, you can reference the fact that he also has the most interceptions and attempts to face down the value of the first 3 points, but #4 is what being a quarterback in the NFL is all about. Add 7 division championships, 2 NFC titles and a Super Bowl win into the mix, and calling Brett Favre underrated becomes a careless statement because he won games. More than anyone else. In 5-10 years Peyton Manning or Tom Brady will likely be called the greatest quarterbacks in history, but right now that title still lies with Brett.

There seem to me to be some incongruencies in the comparison of these two works: Alabama is rated as the fifth most overrated program according to Maisel. Yet, he points out that they were robbed of a (thirteenth) National Championship in 66, and two of their QB alums were rated by Sal Pal as the most over- and underrated of all time. That is a lot of mentions in the above pieces for a program to somehow be subjectively rated the #5 most overrated program!
Alabama has 12 consensus National Championships since 1901 which is second only to Notre Dame’s 13, and three more than both Michigan and USC. How is that the 5th most overrated program?

I’m trying to figure out how a coach can go through 22 years without winning a NC; never even play one bowl game with the chance of winning a NC; have a record versus teams ranked at the end of the year nine games under .500; and who never had a single season where he was over .500 versus teams ranked at the end of the year would be considered a HOF coach.

I understand his overall record. It seems to me all he did was beat bad football teams on a consistent basis.

“Joe Willie, aka Broadway Joe, Namath, the favorite son of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, lifted the old American Football League out of the sandlots and onto the national stage. In 1969, he had the audacity to predict – make that guarantee – a win in Super Bowl III, and he brilliantly pulled it off. For that reason alone, Joe Namath will always be #12 in our game-day programs and #1 in our hearts. Overrated? No way!”